This blog could lose me a few supporters. I say this safe in the knowledge that a fair number won't unfollow because I'm like the prisoner. I am a number not a name. But for the real people on Twitter who actually care about things and not just mindless childish postings, (That footie chick has big tits LOL) what I'm about to write may just annoy the shit out of you and be too politically charged and weird for you to comprehend.
Friday Night here in England we had the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. If stories are to be believed it cost £20,000,000. Quite a lot of money unless you fall into one of the following categories.
1) A Banker who has just got his bonus
2) A Footballer who has just moved from Newcastle to Liverpool
3) A Man City supporter
4) A Sheik or Russian magnate.
5) Don't give a shit.
I'll be frank with you, I fall into one of these categories. Guess which one... Go on....
Basically I see it this way. Danny Boyle was called over by Seb Coe and asked if he wanted to be creative genius behind the opening ceremony. He said yes and was given £20,000,000. Now just to put something into perspective here. The budget for "127 Hours" which ran for just over an hour and a half was £18,000,000. "The Beach" had a budget of £49,000,000. So Danny spent £20,000,000 on a four hour ceremony designed to show off everything that was great about Britain. So far I don't have an issue.
In the past three years, we have changed our Government and been promised that measures of cuts and austerity and debt control would see our country blooming. And this very week we've had the news that we're in the worst double dip recession for over 50 years. (And a minor point here, under Labour just before we booted Gordon Brown out of office we had economic growth)
In the past three years Danny Boyle has sat down with a giant flip chart and written down.
1) Kenneth Brannagh in a top hat oversees a gaggle of body popping engineers while smoking a giant cigar.
2) A giant ship will celebrate welcomg immigrants from the West Indies
3) A Forge will create the Olympic rings in a manor resembling Saruman's destruction of Fangorn Forest in the Two Towers.
3) Mr Bean will play the theme from Chariots Of Fire
4) Mike Oldfield will play Tubular Bells, surrounded by jive dancing nurses and doctors, and children in hospital beds.
5) A 60 ft high Lord Voldemort will be beaten back by a hundred Mary Poppins'
6) James Bond will walk through Buckingham Palace followed by Corgies and meet the Queen.
7) The Queen and Bond will sky dive out of a helicopter.
8) A Giant house will lift up to reveal a guy on the interenet..... Lets make him the inventor of the internet!
9) 27 cyclists wearing angel wings will cycle to Come Together.
Imagine the ideas he rejected.... I'd like to think that Grace Jones Hula Hooping to A View To A Kill was very nearly in there.
So which of these do we seem to be more cynical about?
Well, and to be frank again, it annoys the crap out of me that as a nation we're more than happy to bend over and be fucked up the arse by a Governemnt, increasing prices on everything; failing to keep their business pals under control and helping them out with tax CUTS and being smug bastards about how its all our fault. Cut the arts, cut the NHS, cut the police, the armed forces.
Why do we find this more acceptable than a spectacle that has allowed hundreds of young people to live their dreams. To dance in front of the Queen and millions of people on TV. To take part in a spectacle in their home city, to prove they have what it takes!! Our view of society is sometimes quite rightly clouded in shit by what happens and how people behave. But sometimes we have to accept that people are better than we give them credit for and all they need is an opportunity.
How many volunteers that danced in the opening ceremony will now decide to follow that as a career? How many will become choreographers? Singers? Actors? For half an hour someone believed in them enough to let them try. And to me that's worth more than treble £20,000,000 that was spent on the ceremony.
We're all born with brains, its a fact of human anatomy that no-one can dispute. The choice we have is how we're going to use them. In three years time there may be another 5,000 graduates that sit on boards and become directors and managers who are only interested in counting beans, making people redundant, increasing the unemployed and increasing the amount of pounds in their pocket. What I'd like to think is that in three years time, inspired by what they saw on one Friday night in July. We have artists, actors, writers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, directors, producers, CGI artists, production managers, set designers, swimmers, runners, rowers...
But above all I'd like to think we have people who are willing to go, this is my dream, this is my talent, I am going to try.
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